Two display port support on the Vive Pro

[amadeus1171]

Oh, how I would love this!  Two ports on the Vive Pro would open it up, finally, to one GPU per eye, and an almost 2x boost in performace.  Can you say, zero asynchronous reprojection?!

 

The Vive Pro is probably in its final stages and preparing for production, though, so I doubt my dream would come true.

 

But oh, if it could... If it could!

 

By the way, if the HTC Vive people are reading this, can you give us, even a little, a hint on how much the pro headset alone would cost?

[Synthesis]

 

Perhaps some day we'll see that technology available. NVIDIA has a project called VRWorks, which, among other things, aims to bring SLI to VR, so you'll be able to have multiple GPUs working together to render each frame. You can read about it from them here: https://developer.nvidia.com/vrworks

Of course, we're nowhere near ready for that. Even modern displays and hardware are being pushed to their limits with what VR can do, so really, it'll probably be some time before we're able to do "one GPU per eye" (Although in reality, they'd have to be synched with SLI/Crossfire because it wouldn't match up exactly otherwise.) 

So really, you're looking at one GPU or GPU team splitting to both displays, regardless of how you slice it.

Thanks!

-John C

P.S. Nope! ;)

[amadeus1171]

I read about VRWorks on the nVidia site and started salivating.  'Did a bit more research, but only to find out very few are using it.  Unity and Unreal Engine have implemented it, but still, barely anyone is using it!  I don't get it.

 

As for the Vive Pro price, you're so mean! lol
Can you at least tell us if it's going to be between $400 and $600, or outside that range?

[Synthesis]

 

There's a number of factors involve, not the least of which is that GPUs are so expensive right now. Basically, there's just not a huge demand to get it going yet. It's probably not being treated as a priority project since really all it's going to do is provide more power for HMDs that don't need it.

As demand increases and more and more people adopt high-end VR, you'll see it emerging. The fact that Unreal and Unity can support it is a huge, because those are kind of the main two publically viable engines these days and they've both gone all in on VR support, so that will only help.

Great post!

-John C

P.S. No can do! You'll just have to wait and see!

[HackPerception]

VRworks is pretty awesome but it's important to keep in mind that most VR dev teams are >5 people and that implementing these technologies has a learning curve. In many cases, you need to base the entire project's tech stack on the rendering pipeline in use and thus enabling it retroactively isn't as simple as it seems. 

 

In 6-12 months you'll start seeing games where VRworks was implemented from inception. 

[amadeus1171]

Can you at least give us an idea when Vive Pro is coming out, and if there will be a special introductionary price for existing owners and/or first adopters?  I paid full price for my Vive.  If the Vive Pro is too dear I may not be able to get it, though I really, really, really want it. x.x

 

I want to play Elite: Dangerous (ED) in higher resoloution.

 

And, can I suggest a new product/api?  A camera rig with multiple cameras facing inwards to capture the subject, and the API to inject the subject into VR.  I want to see myself actually sitting in the captain's chair in ED!  How cool would that be?!  And to be able to extract different views from VR, independent of what the game is showing.  For example, while in VR, I may be looking forward, but the API would generate another view from the back and to the side; for streaming, you know?  :-D  (You can have this  product suggestion for free :-D )

[HackPerception]

, 

 

Pro is still slated for Q1; more info is forthcoming. 

 

The scanning thing is actually already a real thing and is something I specialize in. They're called capture stages and they use dozens-hundreds of cameras to generate a 3D model using photogrammetry. They look like this. The reason they're not more common is 1) price 2) it takes quite a while to clean up the resulting model. In some cases it may take a hundred artist hours to fully clean, decimate, texture, and rig a model and it can cost ~$7000. Completed models can be bought here at an affordable price. You can also use laser scanning but there are drawbacks to that workflow.There is a really neat tool called Atom View which I think will be hugely helpful for getting scan data into VR. 

 

What's more probable is that avatar editors will be super popular. I think Vreal will cause a shift in how streaming works. https://vreal.net/ 

 

The next gen stuff is happening at USC.

. 

[Brother Wolf]

The price of the HTC Vive Pro HMD will be $399.99 USD and will be announced Febuary 21st.  This is the actual cost of the HMD upgrade only. The HMD will be available for current owners of the original Vive first, as per Daniel O'Brien's announcement during CES 2018.

 

4Q 2018 the official, complete package will be available for consumers @ $799.00 USD.

[Brother Wolf]

The price of the HTC Vive Pro HMD will be $399.99 USD and will be announced Febuary 21st. This is the actual cost of the HMD upgrade only. The HMD will be available for current owners of the original Vive first, as per Daniel O'Brien's announcement during CES 2018.

 

 

 

4Q 2018 the official, complete package will be available for consumers @ $799.00 USD.